Identifying Unmarked Family Photos: Charles and Anna Schmidt

The photo below is Charles Schmidt (1860-1942) and his wife Anna Mueller (possibly Miller) (1864-1956). It was probably taken on their wedding day, judging by the flowers on his lapel. Charles Schmidt was the brother of my great-grandfather, Frank Schmidt, and the photo was given to me by Frank's daughter, Agnes, who was my grandmother. Charles and Frank were raised in Greenville, Wisconsin, which is not far from New London where, judging by the photographer's mark, the photo was taken.

I know the above photo is Charles and Anna Schmidt because my grandmother, who knew them well, told me; perhaps more importantly, she also wrote it on the back of the photograph. I probably would not have remembered their names when I rediscovered the photo in a box some years later - after Agnes had died.

The photo below did not come to me from immediate family. This was in the album owned by a distant cousin - who did not know anything about her family history, and thus, the names that were written on some of the pictures were meaningless to her, making identifying the photos from her scans and emails very challenging. 

Before trying to identify anything from the album, I took a look at the lineage of the woman who originally owned it - my grandmother's first cousin, Mary. Mary was descended from Charles A. Schmidt, the elder brother of my great-grandfather Frank Smith; both were the sons to Anton Joseph Schmidt and his wife, Theresa Kommer. An album belonging to a descendant of Charles would also likely contain images of Anna's family - the Mullers. Depending on who originally owned the album, it could potentially contain images of other, more distant relations, as well.

The photo below is the first one Mary's daughter sent me, and I realized very quickly it was not the one I was looking for - the children were all wrong. I was looking for, I believed, a family group that included my great-grandfather, Frank - but Frank had two older sisters, which immediately ruled out this photo. There were also not enough children - the blended family of Theresa and Franz Joseph Kneisel was huge.

In looking more closely at the photo, though, I noticed that the order and ages of the children, based on census records, was entirely correct to the Charles and Anna Schmidt. Their children were: Frank (B. 1886), Emma (b. 1888), Edward (b. 1889), John (b. 1892), and Elizabeth (b. 1894). 

I noted also that the photo was taken at a studio in Appleton, not far from where Charles and Anna lived (in New London, according to census records). Holding up the two photos side by side, it certainly appears as though it could be the same couple, aged about ten years - which would be about right, as the wedding photo and family photo are about ten years apart.

I had the good fortune to have yet another photo in my own collection:

This one is also from my grandmother. The woman on the right I know to be her sister, my great-aunt Emma Smith. The photo is is marked on the back "This is Emma Smith and her cousin on her father's side." I had long suspected that the cousin in question was Emma Schmidt - and looking at the woman on the left, and comparing her to the little girl in the family picture, it seems likely it is the same girl. Their fathers were very close, and the girls - both named Emma - were born within a year of each other.

I am confident that the family group is the Charles Schmidt family, based on the source of the album, the comparison to a known photo of the the family, and the census records for the family. It was nice to get confirmation of my suspicion that the cousin in the second photo was who I thought it might be.

Review: The Genealogist's Internet, by Peter Christian

We live in an era when genealogy has become much more accessible to the masses, due to fact that so many records are being indexed and digitized, and now are available online - and with more coming available each day. There's a downside to this, of course: It can be overwhelming to know where to start, or where to go next. For those researching in the United Kingdom, though, there is a helpful guide to online resources:  The Genealogist's Internet: The Essential Guide to Researching Your Family History Online, by Peter Christian.  The book was produced by the National Archives, is now in its fifth edition, and is primarily focused on records from that area. It is an excellent resource for anyone researching in that part of the world.

The book is broken into chapters focused on the different types of resources (military, census, church, tax). Each section includes an explanation of the types of records you can expect to find, and how to interpret and use those records. It then explains the various online record repositories broken out geographically, with useful information on the strengths and weaknesses of each collection, as well as cost information where needed. 

Those who are new to UK and Irish research will find this book an invaluable tool. There are explanations of numerous types of records that are unique to the United Kingdom, such as:

• Civil registrations - when they began, how to locate them, and what may be found in them
• Records related to England's colonial period, such as those related to transportation of convicts
• Occupations, including both an explanation of the various terms and where to look for company and trade union records  
• The unique problems posed by Irish records, such as the anglicization of names

I found the explanations of the different records types to be full of information that would help keep research focused and productive. The section on church information explains why many collections are incomplete or unavailable; however, it also goes into things like church courts - a record type I would never have thought to look for because I never knew such a thing existed. They sound like interesting records, too: matrimonial disputes, and disputes between clergy and parishioners, often about tithes.

The book  also has sections that discuss general difficulties encountered in using technology to conduct genealogical research, such as indexing errors, how to conduct different types of searches (wildcard versus Soundex, etc), and recommendations on how to handle various file types one might wish to download and store. There are even chapters covering internet etiquette and privacy issues. 

Finally, the authors thought ahead: Since  The Genealogist's Internet  provides hundred of web addresses, all of which can change in the blink of an eye, they have created a website of all the links in the book - which will be updated as links change. 

The Genealogist's Internet is much more than a collection of links, though: It is a well-researched,  comprehensive, accessible research aid for anyone who wishes to conduct genealogical research in Great Britain and Ireland. Recommended.

Generous Genealogy: Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness - Again

I adored Random Acts of Genealogical Kindness. For those of you who never experienced it, it was a genealogy site full of volunteers who charged no more than gas and copying costs - and many times, not even that - to retrieve records someplace that they had access to ... but you did not.

It was a simple site - nothing fancy - but those of us who used it didn't need anything fancy. We needed a trip to the courthouse or an archive or a cemetery that was too far away for us to get to. The volunteers were often more than helpful: since they knew the area, they would direct you not only to things you were looking for, but quite often suggested things that you might not have been aware of.

The site disappeared a while back when the person who organized it died. I was sad to see it go.

Someone should do something like that again, I thought - and so they have: A website called Generous Genealogists has sprung up, and put out a call for volunteers. Modeled on the original Random Acts website - but a touch more elegant-looking - the site is free to use.

If you have the time or ability to help them out - please go volunteer. It's almost as much a thrill to help someone else break through their brick wall, as it is to break through one of your own.

I wish the team at Generous Genealogists every success, and I'm excited to follow their progress and development.

Have you volunteered for Generous Genealogists? Please share your story in the comments.

Identifying Unmarked Family Photos: Theresa Kommer Schmidt Kneisel

I wrote previously about my frustrations in trying to identify a photo from an old album of unmarked family photographs. I was so disheartened by the experience that I stopped researching that part of the family for nearly two years.

Only on my recent discovery of an error I had made on Theresa Kommer's death date did I decide to revisit that part of the family. I ran across a very old post on the Fox Valley Genealogical Society website that provided me with the clue I needed to finally begin tracing Theresa's line back to Europe. I contacted the woman who had made the post, who was descended from Theresa's daughter Elizabeth - my great-grandfather Frank's older sister. The original poster offered to send me a copy of her research folder, and I requested "any photos she might have of that part of the family." I received a thick sheaf of documents, and an assortment of family photos, including this one:

Theresa Kommer and her second husband, Franz Joseph Kneisel. 

Photo taken about 1890.

She also included photographs of Anna Kneisel, the daughter of the couple above, and Elizabeth Schmidt, from Theresa's first marriage.

Elizabeth Schmidt Melzer Bauer (1854-1931)

Interestingly, when I went back to the photos I had received from the unmarked album, one was a duplicate: A wedding photo of Anna Kneisel was in both sets.

I put the the photo that I knew for sure was Theresa and her second husband, next to the photo I believed might be Theresa and her second husband, to see if I could make a final determination:

Are these the same people, aged ten years? 

(Left: FJ Kneisel and Theresa Kommer; Right: Scan #5.)

I'm still not sure. It is especially difficult to compare the two as neither of the pictures is an especially good quality scan. There is nothing super-obvious to link the two pairs, no matching jewelry, clothing, photo studio, etc.

I asked my cousin Linda her opinion, and she compared both photos and said she wasn't sure, either. She did, however, make another side-by-side comparison:

The resemblance is striking, is it not? I see two possibilities: First, that the photo on the left is of a much older Elizabeth Schmidt; or, that the photo is, as I think, Elizabeth Schmidt's mother Theresa Kommer. The unidentified photo was taken in Appleton, and both women lived there.

The problem with the idea of the photo on the left being Elizabeth Schmidt and one of her husbands is this: She wasn't very lucky in her marriages. Her first husband (Bernard Melzer) died not long after they married; and she divorced her second husband (Anton Bauer) after a brief marriage - the 1905 census shows them living in separate households. She did not marry a third time, so it is unlikely there is a photo of her in her old age with a husband.

It seems very likely to me that The Unidentified Couple of "Scan #5" really is Franz Joseph Kneisel and Theresa Kommer. What do you think?

Brick Wall Breakthroughs: Theresa Kommer Schmidt Kneisel

For a long time, my storied ancestor Theresa Kommer Schmidt Kneisel has represented a brick wall in my research: No death certificate or obituary that I could locate, no indication on the ship's manifest as to her town of origin, and the added problem of having a husband named "Schmidt" - hardly an unusual name. But recently, I noticed that I had her death date incorrect in my records. I had a date of 1900, but noticed she was listed in a town directory as late as 1908, and a biography of her son Charles published in a town history gave a death date of 1908. I realized that if I had made an error with such a simple fact, I had not even begun to do my work on Theresa, and decided to go back and start pulling together more facts about Theresa.

I decided to start with the most interesting place: The trial of Joshua Wilson, the Stockbridge Indian who murdered Theresa's husband Joseph, my great-great-grandfather, in 1863. I contacted the Cofrin Library Area Research Center, which I have worked with in the past to retrieve old wills and divorce records. The Archivist told me that yes, there were still court records from that era, but asked if I could pin down the trial date more precisely as those early records were not indexed.

Identifying Unmarked Family Photos: Theresa Kommer Schmidt Kneisel

Many years ago, on my annual Wisconsin Christmas visit, my grandmother took me to visit a cousin in Appleton - a woman whose exact relationship to us was always a little fuzzy to me. This cousin, Mary, had a large photo album filled with ancient photos, and we paged through the album slowly and carefully. Some of the photos I recognized - my great-grandparents, Frank and Anna. One of the photos was of my great-great-grandmother, Theresa Kommer.

It was quite astonishing to see a picture of a woman with such a compelling history. It is easy to conjure up visions of the hardship of her life: Theresa grieving for her murdered husband, far from her homeland and family, being forced to remarry out of necessity, and living out the rest of her life in great sadness. I don't recall thinking she looked sad though. I do remember wishing I could stare her picture for hours.

I wanted to make a copy of the photo, but Mary refused. This was in the days before scanners, and I imagine she did not trust a 16-year-old girl to safely return her family treasures. I promptly forgot about the whole thing until a couple of years ago.

Thriller Thursday - Wisconsin Death Trip: Theresa Kommer Schmidt Kneisel

Theresa Kommer has an extraordinary story. She was born 24 June, 1827, according to her gravemarker; in 1858, she and her husband Anton Joseph Schmidt and their first four children emigrated to Wisconsin from Bohemia, according to a passenger list for the Adler that I located on Ancestry.

Anton Joseph Schmidt and wife Theresa came to America from Bohemia aboard the Adler in 1858. They left via the port of Bremen; sadly, the Bremen records were destroyed.

Upon arriving in Wisconsin, the family settled in on a farm in Greenville and had two more children, the youngest of whom, Frank, was my great-grandfather. The new life they came for, however, didn't last long. On January 2, 1863, less than five years after their arrival, Anton Joseph Schmidt was shot and killed by a drunk Stockbridge Indian, Joshua Wilson. The murder caused quite a bit of excitement in the town; the events were all preserved for posterity in highly emotive Victorian prose in the local newspapers.

 From the Appleton Post-Crescent, 1863. 

Tech Tuesday - Transcript Transcribing Software

One of my least favorite tasks in my genealogy is transcribing old handwritten documents. To begin with, there are the difficulties reading the old quill-written longhand, understanding much of the language (chains and rods, anyone?), and then doing battle with the often poor quality of the scans we must work from. But then you must either:

1. load the scanned image on your computer in an image-viewing program, and toggle back and forth between windows - read and interpret in one window, toggle to word processing program and type, and back again.
2. print out the scanned old document and prop it up next to your monitor while you type. Usually this is accompanied by a problem, for example, the hard to read text shrinks down to fit the size of paper you are printing on, which is much smaller than the original book.

What you really want is to have a split screen, so that you have both the image and the word processing right there on the monitor screen together. I guess you could open two windows at the same time (one for word processing and one for image viewing) and re-size them on your monitor, but even that doesn't quite work right.

Anyway, you don't have to, and the best part is, it won't cost you.

Wisconsin Death Trip: Gladys Wright, 1907-1923

The death of a child is wrenching, even nearly a hundred years later, and even to those who never knew the children or their parents. There is a always special kind of heartbreak that goes along with a young life lost. Although the obituary of Gladys Wright, age 16, tells a sad story, there is only a hint - easily missed - of the whole story: "She is survived by her parents and one brother." 

The Family Business: Electric Motor Service Co., Appleton, WI.

I have submitted this post for inclusion in the Carnival of Genealogy, sponsored by The Creative Gene. All contributors' posts can be seen by August 4. The topic for this edition is Business and Commerce.

That handsome fellow in the photo is my grandfather, Howard Herrman (1901-1978), and the business behind him is the one he owned and ran: the Electric Motor Service Co., in Appleton, Wisconsin. I was only in his shop once, in the mid-1970's, when it was being cleared out and shut down. I asked my mother for her recollections:

Dad's business was located at 116 N. Superior St., between College Ave. and Lawrence St. near the entrance to Jones Park. His main business was repairing electric motors, but he also sold new and used motors and parts.

It was a rather greasy place, since all motors require oiling, greasing, etc., so Dad always warned us to be careful where we moved, and what we touched, because Mom would yell at him (and at us) if we came home with grease on our clothes. Nevertheless, we all loved the place. It was calm and quiet and the only place to have a private conversation with Dad, since at home Mother always listened in. If one of Dad's friends happened to be there, we also could hear more adult conversations about politics, local issues, business problems, etc. -- topics that were rarely discussed at home.

(My three sisters and I)  learned to type as we entered high school, and Dad "hired" us to work in the shop once a week or so, preparing invoices and typing business letters. It was good experience, preparing us for jobs in offices when we finished school and helping to prepare me for college.

We frequently dropped in at the shop when we were downtown shopping or running errands and needed a ride home. No matter how busy he was, Dad always seemed happy to see us and would chat as he worked.

Dad rented the little building his shop occupied for many years -- before he met and married our mother, until I was away at the university. Apparently the elderly owner of the property died, and the new owner wanted to raise the rent beyond what Dad wanted to pay, so he then moved to South Superior St., the store now occupied by a bicycle shop.

The photo above must have been the original shop, because I found an ad for the second location in a 1958 Appleton newspaper through NewspaperArchive.com:

That appears to be the address on the picture below, which was from my grandfather's collection. He was an avid amateur photographer and kept a darkroom in the basement at the house.

It was interesting to hear my mother describe her father's business as the place where she could have a private conversation with him, and I know the reason why: Howard's younger brother told me that Howard did not allow his wife to set foot in his shop. He considered it his domain, and "no wife of his was going to interfere" there. Apparently, that rule did not apply to his four daughters.

Identifying Unmarked Family Photos: Hanna and Isak Hakel

We've all run across them: those unmarked family photos - old ones, of sometimes beautiful people. Sometimes they are mixed up with our own, known ancestors' photos; some sit in antique shops, their eyes trying to tell us their stories, now lost, along with their names.

But sometimes there are clues, and with a bit of luck, we can give that face a name.

My aunt lives in Johannesburg, South Africa; my father (her brother) lives in the Los Angeles area; while I'm up in Seattle. I wanted family photos, which my aunt had. But she didn't know how to get them to me and none of us wanted to take our chances with 100-year-old photos and the international mail. My aunt is - how shall I say this? - not a computer person. My father arranged for someone in South Africa to scan the photos - page by page from the antique albums. 


Since I knew that the photos were going to come to me digitally and were in many cases had no identifying marks on them, I requested that I receive scans of the full page from each scrapbook, in addition to the individual pictures. This would allow me to see what was grouped together and the relative sizes of the pictures. I also requested that for loose photos, no borders be cropped away; this would help me where there was a photo studio name or other detail that might identify two photos taken by the same camera.

When the pages came back, the photos we were most easily able to identify, obviously, were of people we knew. This photo, for example, is of Hanna Hakel:

My father was able to identify her easily, as she was his grandmother, and lived with him and his family when he was growing up. Hanna (Bot) Hakel was born in 1882 in Vekshny, Lithuania. On 16 March 1901, she married Isak-Faibusch Hakel, in Libau (Liepaja), Latvia. Isak-Faibusch was born 9 December 1872 in Riga, and died 15 September 1927, in Libau. He is buried in the Liepaja Jewish Cemetery. 

Here is the picture as it is in the album, on the page*

The photo of Hanna is at the top right, with another photo of her below it. Below that, though, is a photo of a man. It appears to be the same size, and mounted to a nearly identical mat.

Here is the individual scan of that photo:

Without seeing the two photos together in the album, and without seeing the surrounding mat, it would be hard to see the similarities between the two photos - but they are still there. 

If you look behind the subject of each photo, the background has variations to it - a light-colored moon-shaped area to the right. It is identical in both photographs.

So, without having any writing on the photos such as names of people, places, or photo studio, we were still able to determine that these two photos were likely taken at the same photo studio, probably around the same time (given the similarity of the mat) - if not the same day.

It was a reasonable conclusion that the unnamed man was Hanna's husband, Isak-Faibusch Hakel.

I was able to ascertain with more certainty when I asked my aunt about the picture. Before I told her who I thought it was, I asked: "Do you have any idea who this man is?"

She replied, "I know he is one of my grandfathers, but I don't know his name. I never met either of them and don't know their names."

Once I told her his name, she remembered another detail: Isak-Faibusch Hakel, her grandfather in the photo, died of tuberculosis.

*of the magnetic-page album whose glue is eating this photo to death as I write this. Ugh - it hurts.

Long Lost Cousins: Pretty As A Picture

Note: This was originally published on my companion blog, Desperado Penguin, on April 25, 2012.

Last summer, I wrote about my late cousin Isak Hakel, who died, taking his sad history with him and leaving me with memories only of a joyful man.

At the time of his death, I was working with the Latvia State Historical Archive to retrieve the history of the Hakel family, and specifically to retrieve photographs of any family members. One of the most amazing things I discovered the Archives holds is old passport photos - apparently, it was necessary to have a passport for identification purposes, and so nearly everyone had one taken in the 1920s and 1930s, and many of these photos still exist.

I had sent Isak all the photos from my grandmother's collection - photos of his mother, father, sister, and grandparents. There was one large wedding photo that Isak was in, and he told me, he knew all the people in the photo. He treasured them and was obviously, in spite of our difficulty communicating, grateful to get them.

But there was one photo I did not have, and it troubled me: Ruth.

Ruth Hakel was Isak's little sister. She was born in 1939, two years before the German Army invaded Liepaja and destroyed the majority of the Jewish inhabitants. She died on November 3, 1943, according to a Yad Vashem card filed by her father that I found online. A short life, for which only a name and some dates remain - and even the death date cannot be stated with certainty.

I wanted to give Isak a picture of his sister, but the archive moved slowly, and it took over a year to receive the records I requested, which arrived just this past week. There were many treasures among in the packet, but the one I hoped for was not to be found.

I began to enter the data into my family tree, and sort through records, and cross-check new information against things I had learned before, from other sources. When I got to Ruth Hakel, I went back to the Yad Vashem website, and looked up the Page of Testimony that was filed for her by her father and brother. The website had been updated recently, and to my amazement, I discovered that along with the Pages of Testimony were now photographs of those who perished.

And there she was.

Ruth Hakel

 Born 1939, Libau, Latvia.

 Died 1943, Auschwitz.

The card and photograph were placed in the museum by her surviving brother, Isak Hakel.

I asked him many questions, yet it never occurred to me to ask him for a photograph. He got it to me anyway.

My Great-Grandmother Hanna Hakel (1882-1957) with

(left) Isak Hakel 1930-2011.

 (right) Romy Hakel 1933-1943.

from my grandmother's albums.

When You Least Expect It: Long Lost Cousins

Note: This was originally published on my companion blog, Desperado Penguin, on August 1, 2011.

It was eighteen months ago that I began my genealogical research that discovered that I have an elderly cousin in Israel. If genealogy is about anything, it's about people and history, and this man was not only a link to my family and its secrets, but also living history: a survivor of a Jewish ghetto in Latvia, then of Auschwitz, then of the cold war era Soviet Union.

I learned about him quite by accident, through a historian whose website documented the destruction of the Jewish community in Libau, Latvia - he guided me to a source for records on my family, but also mentioned that there was still a family member living, and led me to someone who provided me with an email address for my cousin, Isak Hakel.

I knew of Isak Hakel, because I had copies of some old photos that belonged to my grandmother, Rachel Hakel - who was his aunt. There was a part of me that was vaguely aware that I had this cousin, and that he might still be living. His father was Schmuel Hakel, known to me as "Uncle Samuel" from Israel, and unfortunately my only interaction with Uncle Samuel was a card he sent me as a child, which I still have, tucked away in my closet a box of treasured letters and cards. He signed his name.

Standing: Schmuel and Ida Hakel (died in Auschwitz), Beno Hakel (shot by SS)

Seated: Isak Hakel and brother Romy (died at Auschwitz), Hanna Hakel, Joseph Hakel.

The general outline of the family history is this: My grandparents, Harry and Rae, were originally from Libau, Latvia, but left sometime in the mid-1930's, emigrating to South Africa. World War Two came along and swept away my grandfather's family in its entirety - so complete was the destruction that he could never say their names again. Granny Rae's side of the family had better luck - if Jews in Latvia in 1941 can be said to have any luck at all - two of her three brothers survived the war. A quick look at the history of Libau tells how extraordinary this was: Of Libau's total pre-war Jewish population of 7,000, fewer than 200 survived.

Schmuel Hakel and his family - wife Ida, sons Romy and Isak, and daughter Ruth - somehow survived the roundups and mass executions in Libau long enough to be documented among the 800 or so residents of the city's Jewish Ghetto. After that point, it is hard to know precisely what happened: The family lore is that Schmuel was sent to Auschwitz and had to choose which of his two sons he could keep with him. He chose Isak, it is said, even though Romy was his favorite; but he believed Romy was smarter and had a better chance of surviving on his own.

If this sounds a little Sophie's Choice to you, it does to me too. The facts are straightforward: Schmuel and Isak survived. Schmuel's wife, Ida, and children Romy (age about 10) and Ruth (age four), perished.

Of course I was extraordinarily curious to learn the truth of the matter, and find out what really happened to my family. How had Uncle Schmuel managed to keep his family alive in Libau for so long? What really happened at the gates of Auschwitz? What happened at Auschwitz? And after the war, under the communists?

I wrote to Isak and was disappointed to immediately discover that he did not speak any English - most unfortunate for doing any research, or doing much of anything really, particularly by email. He seemed to speak a dialect of Yiddish, but even my efforts to communicate with him through interpreters ran into difficulty: his replies to me were short, often badly typed, and the dialect he spoke was evidently quite an obscure one.

I emailed him my grandmother's old family photos. He thanked me for the "bilden," and sent me an assortment of seemingly random emails: A powerpoint of elaborate topiaries in Florida was one that stood out. I wasn't sure what to make of them but it pleased me nonetheless to receive them - he seemed to want to communicate as well. Every email I sent received an email in return - just not a reply to my writing in particular.

I took a chance and contacted one of the people mentioned in one email, as she seemed to have constructed some outlines of our family tree on a website, and I was thrilled when she replied, in English, and offered to interpret. She was the cousin of Isak's wife, and through her I learned that Isak, too had questions - starting with how I was related to him, and what had happened to his cousins, his Aunt Rae's children, and so on. I answered his questions and sent him more photos - of me and my family, and my cousins. I asked my own questions, and he replied with the facts about the War: Uncle Joseph, Schmuel and Rae's other brother, fled to the USSR ahead of the Nazi invasion, and so there was some family there, and Isak was in touch with them.

He did not answer my questions about Auschwitz, his mother, his sister - even the simplest questions on the subject received no response.

Receiving little of what I was looking for, I was glad of the information I received, but gradually gave up on getting anything useful - by my own standards - from Isak Hakel.

Then my father came along. Eager to connect with me, he went to great lengths for obtain copies of old family photos that still remained with his sister in Johannesburg - having numerous albums scanned, page by page and picture by picture. He brushed up on his Yiddish and wrote to Isak Hakel, a cousin whose existence he had been completely unaware of.

So there we were - an elderly man in Israel, a computer programmer in California, an amateur genealogist in Seattle, communicating with pictures and intermediaries and, on one occasion that thrilled Isak, Google Translator.  We were a family, albeit with none of the shared memories that generally helps define the relationships. Instead, we had a tremendously sad shared loss - a searing pain that can still be felt across the generations.

But Isak was the only one with any true knowledge of what actually happened in 1941 and 1942, and it did not matter what language he was asked in, he simply did not care to discuss it. Instead, he filled my inbox with links to funny Hanukkah videos on Youtube. He sent photos of him and his wife, enjoying some ice cream in the sun.

He looked happy and healthy, which I found extraordinary given the incredible tragedies that define his childhood, the unspeakable loss he experienced and I imagined him carrying with him: an unbearable great weight. I do not know what his memories were or how he bore them; what was fascinating history and a subject of great interest to me was just that: his private memories of his family and his own childhood. It was none of my business, although he did not say so.

Isak Hakel.

I tried to learn about my family and my history and what I learned was this: You can choose to be happy and enjoy your life, no matter where you start from or where life takes you.

The stream of email forwards from Isak Hakel stopped abruptly in May, and I got a bad feeling. I emailed and received no reply. I emailed his wife's cousin and learned he had died, age 80.

When someone dies, there will always be something we wish we had said or done - something more, whatever that something is. I don't know what else it was I wanted to do for Isak Hakel, as I was only just beginning to understand who and what he was - and then he was no more. He did not give me what I wanted; instead he gave me something far greater. And yet, I never met the man.